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Because there were fire stairs. The WTC (like all modern high-rises in the developed world) had a pretty impressive set of firefighting and evacuation infrastr

Because there were fire stairs. The WTC (like all modern high-rises in the developed world) had a pretty impressive set of firefighting and evacuation infrastructure, procedures, and personnel. This training video goes through it pretty well [0]. - Smoke detectors and pull stations everywhere to ensure any fire is detected and responded to quickly (i.e. before it gets out of hand). There was a fire station across the street. - A huge console for responding firefighters to see the location of alarm conditions, make building or floor-wide announcements, and even have two-way conversations with intercom stations on particular floors. - Sprinklers and redundant power for the pumps that run them. - Fans to push smoke out of the building and supply clean air to evacuation routes. - Fire stairs, kept closed under positive pressure to keep smoke out, kept unobstructed by regular patrols, encased in material that wouldn't burn through for hours. - A network of piping and wall-mounted hoses easily fed from the dedicated fire-truck parking. - Fire drills, designated authorities for the evacuation of each floor, security personnel trained to watch over the fire alarm equipment. It's not like the WTC wasn't prepared to evacuate in a fire. It's just that nobody anticipated all that infrastructure (pipes, stairwells, etc) getting sheared through by an airplane. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28laYNm5YNw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28laYNm5YNw

jsprogrammer 10y ago
Fire stairs, like, a single column of stairs, or, multiple columns? If they were placed near each corner, some of them should have survived until collapse. Impact by planes had been imagined prior to the crashes, but I don't know if it had been by the designers. Considering these were very tall structures, it seems likely someone would have at least briefly imagined it.
- mcjiggerlog 10y ago
  There were 3 stairwells in each building. Here's an excerpt from this fascinating wikipedia page[1] about one of the only four people to make it out from above the impact in the South tower: "The airliner that struck the North Tower struck it perpendicular to the north face. The impact severed all the elevators and all three stairwells. The airliner that struck the South Tower struck at an angle, severing two stairwells, but it left Stairway A, the one they were using, more or less intact." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Clark_(September_11_survivor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Clark_(September_11_surv...

jsprogrammer 10y ago

Fire stairs, like, a single column of stairs, or, multiple columns? If they were placed near each corner, some of them should have survived until collapse. Impact by planes had been imagined prior to the crashes, but I don't know if it had been by the designers. Considering these were very tall structures, it seems likely someone would have at least briefly imagined it.

mcjiggerlog 10y ago
There were 3 stairwells in each building. Here's an excerpt from this fascinating wikipedia page[1] about one of the only four people to make it out from above the impact in the South tower: "The airliner that struck the North Tower struck it perpendicular to the north face. The impact severed all the elevators and all three stairwells. The airliner that struck the South Tower struck at an angle, severing two stairwells, but it left Stairway A, the one they were using, more or less intact." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Clark_(September_11_survivor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Clark_(September_11_surv...